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Editorial

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For homeless youths who are alone, scared and hungry, Ohio State University’s Star House is a
safe haven where they can find food, showers and caring guidance to escape the streets and lead a
productive life.

That alone makes the $665,000 a year tagged in Ohio’s new biennium budget for the drop-in center
a great investment for taxpayers. Homeless youths and young adults are incredibly vulnerable.
Adults typically have already let them down; it’s a good thing that, this time, lawmakers didn’t do
the same.

Lacking family guidance, too old for foster care and ineligible for family shelters, these young
people often are invisible until they graduate to the criminal-justice system or the homeless-adult
shelter system, or become one of the thousands homeless youth buried in unmarked graves every year
in this country.

The lucky ones survive, somehow. Star House aims to make this more than a matter of luck, and in
so doing became a national model. The center opened in 2006 using a federal research grant to help
get homeless youth into services and get them off the streets.

In the years since, the center’s founder and executive director, Natasha Slesnick, and other
caring souls have scrambled to keep the center open.

Star House was dangerously close to folding when the state funding appeared. And for a while
that was touch and go. The House put the money in the two-year state budget; the Senate took it
out. In May, Slesnick and others pleaded with the Senate Finance Committee.

“It is possible that you may not realize the extent of homelessness among our youth in central
Ohio,” Slesnick testified. “That is completely understandable because these youth are hiding from
the system, blending in during the day and sleeping on riverbanks, in abandoned buildings or with
predators at night.”

“On our current budget, it costs us $485 to serve one homeless youth, while the average cost to
incarcerate an individual in Ohio is $24,870, and the average cost for a typical uninsured hospital
stay is $19,400.”

On the streets, these young people are preyed upon by drug dealers and human traffickers. Star
House offers a safe place to hang out, clean up and get help with finding a job, housing, bus
passes and school placement. Staff members work with 20 to 40 young people each day, serving 435
individuals last year in a cramped, run-down rental house at N. Fourth Street and 12 {+t}{+h}
Avenue.

Slesnick, an OSU professor of Human Development and Family Science, said they tracked 270
clients for a year and found they were far more likely to find housing and jobs, and far less
likely to abuse drugs or alcohol or be depressed.

The state money will allow Star House to expand its hours to stay open nights and weekends and
to treat more mental illnesses and drug problems before they can ruin lives.

Star House’s clients may legally be adults, but emotionally they are still growing up and need
support and guidance. Chances are, these kids got a raw deal from the start. When a family can’t or
won’t be there, it’s up to society to step in and finish the job.